


Open Door

by DreamsOfSleep



Category: New Girl
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 02:10:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6834814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamsOfSleep/pseuds/DreamsOfSleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU: No Sam, no Reagan, no airport complications at Schmidt & Cece's wedding…just him asking her for the rest of their lives together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Open Door

“Sam dumped me,” Jess tells him the night before the wedding. She looks down at her feet when she tells him so he can’t read her eyes, but he still hears the pain in her words.

Nick wants to give her a hug but he stops himself. He doesn’t think he is allowed to any more. He forces his arms to remain at his sides. He gently asks her, “What happened?”

“He was in love with his best friend.” A crooked smile appears on her face and she chuckles faintly to herself. She mutters, “Predictable.” 

”He’s out of his mind,” Nick blurts out.

Her eyes dart quickly up from the floor to meet his. Something unreadable passes over her face. 

“You okay?” he asks her with a worried frown. She looks away from him. “Yeah, I’m okay,” she says faintly, quietly.

“I guess we’re both going solo.” He hesitates briefly before he asks her, “Why don’t we go together? For old times' sake. We’ll dance; we’ll get drunk. It’ll be fun.” He gives her an encouraging smile.

She looks off into the distance and he can tell she is remembering other weddings they have been to together. She gives him a faint smile before she replies. “Okay, let’s go to a wedding together.” 

\---

Afterwards, he lies in his sleeping bag in Schmidt’s room, wide awake. Schmidt is sleeping peacefully in his bed. There were many tears shed today since Cece’s mom changed her mind and surprised Cece this morning, the day before her wedding. She said she couldn’t disapprove of a man who called her every Monday since the day of their engagement party to convince her to come to Cece’s wedding. _“I’d do anything to make her happy,” _he hears Schmidt’s voice echo in his head. He makes a decision.__

\---

Once he is parked in front of Sam’s house, he already knows this is a terrible idea. He is drunk on the idea of protecting her, still. He can’t help the impulse. He never could. He thinks Sam will probably punch him in the throat again, but he doesn’t care. He knows he has to try. He knows he’d do anything for her.

\---

He keeps knocking on Sam’s door until Sam answers, bleary-eyed. “Nick?” he says in a surprised tone when he opens the door. “What are you doing here?” Sam is in just his boxers, still half-asleep. He rubs at his eyes.

“Come to the wedding, Sam.” Nick says. “You promised her before you broke up. She wants you there.”

Sam looks irritated briefly but then he just sighs and rubs a hand against the back of his neck. “Did you talk to her about why we broke up?”

Nick nods his head, "She said you broke up because you realized you were in love with your best friend."

"Did she tell you anything _else_?" Sam presses him more insistently.

Nick thinks hard for a few seconds then shakes his head, “Nope. That was it.” 

Sam gives him a sad smile. “It was because of you, you know.”

Nick is immediately defensive. “Nothing’s going on between us any more. She didn’t do anything. She loves _you_ , Sam.”

“She still has feelings for you," Sam says bluntly.

Nick is rendered speechless. He looks at Sam in wide-eyed disbelief. “Sh…she told you that?”

Sam gives Nick a look. “She didn’t have to.”

They share an awkward silence standing in the doorway, both of them in their pajamas, staring at each other. Sam fidgets uncomfortably for a few seconds before finally giving Nick a comforting, awkward pat on the shoulder. Sam says sympathetically, “Go home and get some sleep, Nick. You have that wedding tomorrow.”

\---

Nick shoves his conflicted emotions down the morning of the big day long enough to perform his best man duties ( _walk her down the aisle, give his best man speech, make small talk with the guests_ ), but it’s like he is running on autopilot. He can’t tell what he’s feeling. His mind passes through a complex range of emotions. He’s hurt that she didn’t tell him. Sad that they can’t talk to each other the way that they used to. Scared that he is going to screw this all up again. But most of all he feels what he hasn’t felt in a long time.... _Hope. ___

\---

At the reception, Nick sits alone at one of the garden tables. His eyes follow her as she moves across the party. She looks radiant in her red bridesmaid dress, even more gorgeous than the day he fell in love with her. A man taps her on the shoulder and asks her to dance. She takes his hand and he leads her out onto the floor. Nick watches them glide across the dance floor until he can no longer take it. He gets up from the table and approaches the pair, grabbing her arm. _"Nick!"_ she yelps with surprise. She struggles against him but he doesn't stop walking until they are behind the main vineyard building in a quiet copse of trees. He finally lets her go. 

“What’s the matter with you, Nick?” she yells at him. She glares at him, rubbing her wrist where he grabbed her too tightly.  


He glares right back at her and angrily spits out, “Why didn’t you say something, Jess?” 

“What?” she asks sullenly. 

“Why didn't you tell me you still had feelings for me?”

He sees a momentary flash of panic on her face before she shoves it down. “Nuh-uh,” she says back petulantly. Her eyes are shifty. “Who told you that?”

"Sam did," he replies more calmly.

"You talked to Sam?!" Now her face is in full-on panic mode.

"He hurt you. I was just going to ask him to come with you to the wedding. I thought that was what you wanted."

"You shouldn’t have done that, Nick," she says to him reproachfully.

He ignores her statement and asks her bluntly, "Are we doing this again or not? I need this to be real, Jess."

“Are you serious?!” she yells, waving her arms in the air at him.

He looks down, away from her. “I never wanted to break up,” he admits quietly. “I only did it because I thought that was what you wanted.” 

He closes his eyes and sighs angrily, running his fingers through his hair before looking at her again. "We used to be able to talk to each other, Jess. What happened?"

"I needed you to grow up, Nick."

He briefly flinches at her words before she sees him set his jaw and look directly back at her. "That’s what you were asking me before, right? When we broke up? About whether I thought about our future? If I was ready for the “next step”…moving out, getting married, having kids. I did, Jess, I do. I think about it all the time."

He is breathing hard like he had just run a mile. He pauses to take a shaky breath before continuing on. "You asked me then if I was ready for it and I panicked. I got scared. We had only been living together in my room for three days and we were already fighting like crazy. I thought we were heading down the road to break up for real. That would mean one of us would have to move out and I couldn’t stand the idea of not having you in my life. I wanted to take our whole relationship back no matter how much it hurt because that meant I got to keep you in my life, even if you weren’t mine."

"But I want you," he says, looking into her eyes intently. "I did then, and I do now. I told you once that if we left Mexico, I could feel we weren’t going to make it. But I’m telling you now, I’m ready for it. Whatever happens, no matter how much we fight, I’m never going to stop loving you. I know that now." His hands reach out to clasp around hers. "I _miss_ you," he says and she sees the anguish in his eyes. "Maybe you still want all those other things you told me about, maybe they still matter to you: the house by the lake, the perfect kids, the perfect life, the guy who has everything in his life planned down to the last detail. But I’m not that guy. If that’s what you want, we can just go back to pretending we’re friends like we have been doing, like we don’t love each other, that we’ll find other people. But if you just want you and me for the rest of your life, you know I’ll be there."

He looks into her eyes and waits for her to say something but all the words she wants to say to him get stuck in her throat. All she can do is stare back at him silently begging him to understand her with her eyes. He has his answer. He gives her a sad smile and squeezes her hands once before he lets go. He turns around and walks away from her with his head down and his hands in his pockets. She watches his back as he walks around the corner of the vineyard building, out of sight. She goes back to the wedding reception and sits alone at an empty table.

\---

She looks at Schmidt and Cece waltzing together out on the dance floor. They can't take their eyes off each other. They are lost in each other's gazes, blissfully unaware of anyone around them, the only two people on Earth. How happy they look. Despite everything, they always made it back to each other. They have stood by each other through thick and thin, through everything.

She reminices about her relationship with Nick. The way they could never help but get under each other's skin. The way they had been there for each other through lost jobs and dead dads, cancer scares and heartbreak. Waking up next to him every day for almost a year, her body curled safely in his warm embrace. Him telling her he loved her. He _loved_ her, and how he had seemed to marvel over those words every time he got a chance to say them. How he came out of his shell for her when he was terrified of everything, coming after her, when she was too afraid to admit she wanted him too.

 _'What are you doing?'_ she asks herself. She thinks about all those perfect-on-paper guys she has dated and how desperately she has acted over the past two years since they have been together. Shoving everything down trying to be the perfect girlfriend to Ryan who checked out of their relationship in England after she met his family, to Sam, who was in love with someone else the entire time they were together. He just wanted her....silly, small, imperfect _her_. With sudden clarity, she realizes she doesn’t care about anything else as long as they are together, as long as he is with her. Being with him makes her happy like nothing else ever will. She feels the cold sweat of panic pass through her body and she thinks… _'I missed my chance. He’s gone.'_ She gets up from the table and rushes out to the parking lot.

\---

She finds him standing near his car, leaning back on the driver’s side door waiting for her with his hands in his pockets. He has a heartbroken look on his face. His body is in profile, his eyes looking into the middle distance across the vineyard. She stands at the top of the stairs of the vineyard's main building. He doesn't notice her at first, but her presence at the top of the stairs eventually draws his attention. When he is able to make out the look on her face, his eyes light up, and he breaks out in a grin. “All in?” he asks breathlessly. She breaks into a run down the stairs, he holds his arms out and catches her, wrapping his arms around her back, she throws her arms around his neck, kissing him with everything she has, everything she is. She eventually pulls back, her smile wide enough to split her face in two. She is so giddy, happy in love, that it makes her heart hurt in the best way. “All in.” she replies with absolute certainty. They leap in his car and drive to Mexico.

**Author's Note:**

> I liked the idea of doing the events at Cece’s wedding in reverse to bring Nick and Jess full circle. At Cece’s first wedding, Jess asks Nick to give them a chance and Nick saying yes to her launches their whole relationship. At Cece’s second wedding, it’s him asking her to give them a chance to start everything again, and he's there waiting for her when she says yes. 
> 
> Hat tip to mrnickmiller on Tumblr for giving me this idea by asking if people preferred "Nick figuring it out or Nick being told?" about Jess's feelings. Most people said Nick figuring it out so I _had_ to write a fic from the alternative perspective. I knew it had to be Sam to tell him too. It just brings everything full circle from the "Cooler" kiss and how Nick told Jess directly that he didn't regret it in S5 when she ran into Sam again. Hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
